What is Mixing (part 1)

Mixing is the process which consists to blend the different instruments together in a homogeneous song. While most of people don’t even know this process exists, the mixing step can arguably be the step that takes the most of your time. In order to explain properly the main concepts, we explore the sound mixing world in 3 parts, which are respectively: Frequency, Dynamics and Stereo.

The first dimension: Frequency

Except for classical music, if you try to blend the instruments together without any treatment, there are big chances that it will simply not work. The main reason is that the frequency ranges of each instrument are overlapping. To give you a better idea, let us compare figure 1 and 2.

Figure 1: Song as recorded before mixing

Figure 2: Song after mixing

As you can see, the first one is chaotic since instrument is present everywhere in the frequency range while the human ear can only hear one sound at each frequency at a time. In other words, it’s a mess.

But if you look at figure 2, you will see that every instrument has its place and play its role. The kick is not trying to replace the bass, and the snare, the lead guitar, like in a classical orchestra.